Send in the clowns

November 18, 2008|By Stephen Bell News-Review Sports Writer

Send in the clowns

The current cover of "The Northern Express" is quite a trip. White people apoplectic in celebrating their open-mindedness, while Rick Coates blathers on, often in ALL CAPS, about The One Who Would Alleviate Us Sinners Of White Guilt And Oh Yeah Save The World Too. Tellingly, he says the largest applause of the night during this Obama TV watching party was when an African-American was shown weaping over this great event. Funny that there were no black faces in the cover photo. But that is how white liberals like it.

Symbolism is a lot easier than, say, setting up a homestead and integrating Benton Harbor. Safe and smug is the order of the day.

"The swooning frenzy over the choice of Barack Obama as President of the United States must be one of the most absurd waves of self-deception and swirling fantasy ever to sweep through an advanced civilisation. At least Mandela-worship-its nearest equivalent-is focused on a man who actually did something.

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"I really don't see how the Obama devotees can ever in future mock the Moonies, the Scientologists or people who claim to have been abducted in flying saucers. This is a cult like the one which grew up around Princess Diana, bereft of reason and hostile to facts … And now the US, like Britain before it, has begun the long slow descent into the Third World. How sad. Where now is our last best hope on Earth?"

Where has the $2-trillion gone? Congressman John Boehner is trying to get the Federal Reserve to tell us, via a Freedom of Information Act request. But this is when it gets convoluted, because the Fed isn't part of the government. It just runs it.

"Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system. Two months later, as the Fed lends far more than that in separate rescue programs that didn't require approval by Congress, there is little disclosure about how the programs are being implemented."

You think the Big Three are poorly run now, with their kowtowing to the UAW, bloated pension plans, bad NFL team, and short-sighteness with the SUV trade? Wait 'til Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank get ahold of them!

"White House press secretary Dana Perino said Bush understands the importance of the industry, but that the carmakers' problems - decades in the making - cannot be blamed on the administration or the recent financial meltdown.

"'Look at the history of these companies, decisions they've made over time that got them to where we are today,' Perino said.

"Frank's legislation would carve out a portion of the $700 billion financial rescue program for the Big Three automakers, letting the government take an equity stake in them in exchange for the loans, said Frank's spokesman, Steven Adamske.

"The Treasury could take warrants to share in a portion of future profits and would have to be paid back before any other shareholder. The car companies would face tougher restrictions on awarding pay packages to executives and dividends to their shareholders than the financial companies that get a piece of the original bailout.

"Auto executives, labor leaders and other industry proponents are mounting an intense lobbying effort for a bailout. They want an immediate $25 billion loan to keep the companies operating and a separate $25 billion to help cover future health care obligations for retirees and their dependents.

"The Big Three and United Auto Workers will have a high-profile chance to make their case at a hearing next Wednesday before Frank's committee."

Look at these rubes baffled that someone might use the words "Hitler" and "socialiasm" together.60-year-old newsflash: The Nazis were the National Socialist German Workers Party. These anonymous typists, the real ignorant hate-mongers, also blame Hitler's psychosis on Catholicism, when it's well known that the Nazis were very out-there occultists deeply rooted in esoteric knowledge.